


life is beautiful, but you don't have a clue

by ifearnocolors



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, EXTREMELY self-indulgent, Fanart, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, I promise, Mirkwood, POV Legolas Greenleaf, Redemption, Thranduil Not Being An Asshole, is spooky af, legolas is babey, the author uses too much imagery, this is basically just several pages of purple prose, thranduil is trying his best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 19:15:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23936983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifearnocolors/pseuds/ifearnocolors
Summary: Legolas couldn’t sleep again.He lay flat on his back in a bed that wasn’t his, in a cold silent room in the heart of a strange palace made of wood and stone. A pale sliver of moon shone through the lacy web of leaves over his head, making the glass gleam like ice. It didn’t look like the same moon he used to watch from his old window. It shone with a sharpness he didn’t like, the milk-white of an evil eye.The sheets felt too tight around his legs, smooth silk unpleasantly cool. Legolas kicked them off and sat up. He put his hands on the icy glass and tried to look out the window, but all he could see was his own reflection, wide eyes and pale face, a small scared shadow over the spiky streaks of a million black, jagged branches against gray sky.Somewhere far away, the sound of glass shattering tore through the silence....Legolas runs away from a broken home. Thranduil comes looking for him and finds a new understanding along the way.
Relationships: Legolas Greenleaf & Thranduil
Comments: 8
Kudos: 89





	life is beautiful, but you don't have a clue

**Author's Note:**

> title is from black beauty by lana del rey. this is super angsty haha don't worry about it

Legolas couldn’t sleep again.

He lay flat on his back in a bed that wasn’t his, in a cold silent room in the heart of a strange palace made of wood and stone. A pale sliver of moon shone through the lacy web of leaves over his head, making the glass gleam like ice. It didn’t look like the same moon he used to watch from his old window. It shone with a sharpness he didn’t like, the milk-white of an evil eye.

The sheets felt too tight around his legs, smooth silk unpleasantly cool. Legolas kicked them off and sat up. He put his hands on the icy glass and tried to look out the window, but all he could see was his own reflection, wide eyes and pale face, a small scared shadow over the spiky streaks of a million black, jagged branches against gray sky.

Somewhere far away, the sound of glass shattering tore through the silence.

Legolas clapped his hands over his ears and wished he was anywhere but here. He hated it here. Everything was wrong, cold and sharp, not at all like the hazy memories of sunlit halls and gentle hands braiding his hair. Why did Ada have to come and take him away?

More smashing. The clatter coming in through the wall was louder, almost duller this time. It sounded like ceramic, or porcelain. A vase, maybe. Legolas stuck two fingers in his ears and screwed up his eyes so he wouldn’t hear the sobs, just the dull, quick rush of his heartbeat. He heard them anyway, of course, pressing his forehead into the freezing cold glass as he listened despite himself. Maybe this time, a soft, twisted voice hissed in his head, he would hear his name.

Breath clouding the glass, he waited. Something dull hit a wall-- a book or a chair or a bloodied fist. Legolas was sure Ada didn’t know he could hear him, because if he did, he’d probably be quieter. He closed his eyes and tried to match pictures to sounds, imagining that cold face cracking like marble, but it was impossible. Ada didn’t cry. He just looked at people with eyes like ice and said things like “I demand silence” and “Close the gates” and “Not now, Legolas.”

Honestly, Legolas didn’t know what he had expected. There was always only one name called at night, and it wasn’t Legolas’s, ever.

The trees outside were blurred. Legolas blinked, and something hot and wet slipped down his cheek. Suddenly furious, he swiped roughly at his face, hating himself for each shiny tear that came away on his palm. His fear was slowly draining away, replacing itself with something that burned and stung, that prickled in his eyes and lit him up, searing through the hollow inside of him until there was nothing left but ashes. Legolas suddenly pushed himself away from the window, unable to bear the harshness of the cold glass, of this cold life. He couldn’t stay here for another second in this shell of a room he couldn’t remember, folding in on himself like a scrap of paper until he disappeared. If he wasn’t wanted, he would leave.

Shivering as his bare feet touched cold stone, Legolas slipped out of bed and knelt, pulling a wooden box out from underneath with surprisingly steady hands. He opened its clasp noiselessly and took out the small satchel, smoothing its worn leather face almost reverently in the pale grey light. Elladan and Elrohir had given it to him before he’d left, as a going-away present. “In case you ever want to come back,” they’d said, glancing meaningfully at each other. It had four wrapped bars of lembas inside, along with a tiny silver knife. He hadn’t asked where they’d gotten it. It was enough that they’d cared.

He slipped the strap diagonally over his left shoulder, so the bag rested against his right knee. It was a little big, but that was okay. What mattered was that he was leaving. Going home. Away from this terrible shadowy place and his Ada who he should have remembered but didn’t, who said “Leave me be, Legolas” and turned away to hide the pain on his face.

Legolas opened his door slowly, holding his breath, and looked left and right down the hall. Nothing but dying candles and the dark stretches of emptiness in between their faded gold light. One last flicker of hesitation burned out inside of him, and he froze for half a second with the cold moonlight at his back, making his hair glow silver like one of those magic swords Elladan and Elrohir told him about, the ones that lit up near danger. The crying was louder out here. It reminded him it was time to go.

He knew which staircase to take, but he didn’t know how to get there. Legolas held onto the shiny banister so he wouldn’t trip in the dark and pulled every half-gone memory of this broken place to the front of his mind, letting them go one by one. Goodbye, old room with shiny green leaves out the window instead of black spikes. Goodbye, someone carrying him over a white courtyard with blue sky. Goodbye Ada who didn’t care about him anymore. He wished he could turn off the tears that kept pooling in his eyes. It was making it hard to see.

Goodbye to the row of gold-rimmed portraits lining the wall. Legolas stopped for a second and pulled back the black drapes covering the one he wasn’t supposed to see, taking one last look at the face everyone said looked just like his. Uncle Elrond said she was “in a better place.” Ada said, “Do not ask me to speak of her ever again, Legolas,” in a strange tight voice, and withdrew into his room for the rest of the day to smash glass and cry.

The gates were open, painting a horizontal stripe of pale grey light down the vast empty hall. Legolas froze when he noticed a guard slumped against the wall, then unfroze when he realized he was asleep beneath his tarnished gold helmet. The gap was just wide enough for him to slip out sideways. He went quickly, before he could lose his nerve, and hovered on the chilly stone porch for half a breathless second before darting away into the dark woods.

The ground was cold and moist under his bare feet. Legolas tried not to think too hard about what he was stepping on. He wished he’d worn shoes, or at least changed out of his pajamas. It didn’t matter, he reminded himself: he’d be in Rivendell by morning. The forest couldn’t possibly be that big: all he had to do was go east, using his hands to map the stars like Elladan and Elrohir had taught him. He tilted his head up and squinted. All he could see was gray, and the jagged edges of a hundred million twisted black trees.

The forest hadn’t looked like this before. Legolas tried to remember. It had been green and bright, not all charred and dead with cold fog spiraling between sharp branches under an ashy sky. There had been a path, too, ending on the other side of the mountains in Rivendell. Where was it now? Had it sunken into the trees and vanished after centuries of neglect?

Something rustled in the branches over Legolas’s head. He gasped, freezing mid-step, then relaxed when he saw it was only an owl. It spread its wide wings and hooted mournfully before taking off. He fumbled in his satchel, heart pounding, and grasped the handle of his small knife, pulling it out. It glinted dully in the dim, misty light. Legolas held it out in front of him, wishing it was a magic glowing sword that could show him the way.

The darkness seemed to swallow him up as he walked, creeping up on all sides like black, twisting rot. Legolas could barely see farther than five feet in front of him, then only two. Then he couldn’t see the silver blade in his hand anymore. He kept going, forcing himself to think about Rivendell. It was bright and welcoming there, so unlike this horrible, horrible place and its shadowy dead trees. Uncle Elrond would be so relieved to see him: he’d ask how on earth Legolas managed to find his way back all by himself. “It was nothing,” Legolas would say modestly. Then he’d tell Elladan and Elrohir how he’d fought off twenty orcs armed with nothing but his tiny knife, and even Arwen would have to be impressed. And he’d never have to come back here again.

The ground was squishy now-- almost sticky, like mud mixed with honey. Legolas could feel it clinging, sap-like, to the bottoms of his feet, making it slightly harder to lift them. Snapping out of his fantasy, he thrust his dagger out again, hand shaking. He tried very, very hard not to think about the pitch-black woods on either side of him, and what unseen things might be lurking inside, watching his every step.

It was getting more and more difficult to walk. Legolas was wading through the sticky stuff now, sinking down to his ankles with every laborious step. What was it? Elladan and Elrohir had told him about quicksand, which was a special type of mud that sucked you in and ate you if you stepped in it by accident. He really, really hoped it wasn’t quicksand.

His dagger caught suddenly on something-- more sticky stuff. Legolas yanked it free and batted at the thin, gummy strands, which were starting to cling to his face and hair. He tried to lift his right leg to take another step, and found, with a small thrill of horror, that it was stuck, sunken almost up to the knee. Stumbling forward, Legolas tripped over his trapped feet and dropped his knife, plunging his hands into more stringy goop. He tried to pull his hands out, but only succeeded in stretching the fibers.

Legolas was panicking now. He couldn’t see where his knife had gone, and both of his arms and legs were stuck, strands of the stuff sticking to his hair and eyelashes. “Help,” he cried, “help!” The quicksand, or whatever it was, was slowly wrapping itself around him, tightening, sticking to his eyes and nose and mouth like dried sap. A quick, rattling click echoed in the silence, bouncing rapidly around the pitch-black: first to his right, then to his left, then right over his head. Orcs, Legolas thought wildly, squirming futilely-- they’d trapped him! “Help!” he screamed, choking on a sticky mouthful.

He fought back the creeping, winding strands just long enough to gulp in one last breath of air, so deep it hurt his lungs, before going under. For a second, all was silent except for the rapid, darting click-click-click of whatever it was that had got him, and then everything suddenly lit up silver-blue in between the criss-crossed sticky strands. A magic sword! Legolas tried to call for help, but his mouth was sealed shut. He followed the swift flash of the glowing blade as it sliced through the wispy white threads over his head, and then, caught in the blue-bright light, he saw it, heart-stopping and huge, so, so much worse than any orc.

A giant spider loomed hideously over him, eight beady eyes fixed on his immobile body, fangs as long as Legolas’s forearm clicking in its gaping mouth. It was spinning the glistening white strands in its many limbs, crafting a massive web around him and the trees, thick cords stretching shiny in the blurred glow of the sword as it swished down, cutting them in half quicker than they could ooze back together. Lungs aching, head spinning, Legolas watched dizzily as the magic sword sliced back and forth, moving faster than he could keep track of. He saw a flash of silver hair and stiffened in horror.

Ada had come to save him. How he’d known that he was missing, Legolas would never know, but he was here and he was cutting through the sticky web with controlled precision and the most furious expression Legolas had ever seen. Legolas wondered dazedly if he was having a nightmare, and then realized that if it was only a dream, then he’d at least be able to breathe.

The sword sliced off one of the spider’s writhing legs. Legolas watched it spin through the air, feeling slightly sick at the shrill, hoarse scream the creature emitted. It lashed out at Ada, fangs click-clicking in agitation, but he dodged the needle-sharp pincers and slashed a deep line down its abdomen. The glowing blade glistened with black blood. The spider released another grating shriek and retreated slowly into the trees, one side contorted in agony.

The sword cut Legolas out of the web with three neat swipes. He gasped for air, eyes streaming with stinging tears, swiping at the sticky fibers all over his face. Ada grabbed him by his collar and yanked him up so his limp legs dangled over the ground, eyes wide with a burning, glassy fury unlike anything Legolas had ever seen. “What,” he bit out, voice sharper than the edge of the blue blade, “were you doing in the forest at night?”

“N-nothing,” Legolas stammered, panicking. “I was just-- just--”

“I do not tolerate lies, Legolas.” Ada was nearly shouting, tar-like blood dripping down the side of the silver-blue sword, fist gripping Legolas’s collar stone-hard, choking him. “What-- were-- you-- doing?” he hissed through gritted teeth, each word its own biting, twisting stab of rage. Legolas quivered and tried to gasp out a response, but then Ada’s face started to change, white skin melting away on one side like a mask and leaving it raw, torn open, burned clean off, one eye fading from blue to clouded white--

“WHAT WERE YOU DOING?” he screamed, so loud it resounded in the pitch-black forest on all sides. Legolas didn’t realize he was screaming too until Ada shook him sharply and he choked on his own sound.

“I was running away!” he cried, tears streaming down his face. “I didn’t-- I didn’t mean it! Please don’t hit me!”

Ada stopped shaking him. Legolas’s vision blurred, and he swiped away the tears with a trembling hand. When he looked up again, the burned side of Ada’s face was completely gone, almost as if it had never been there at all. He looked more shocked than furious now, like he’d run out of terrifying threats and couldn’t think of what else to say. “I’m not going to hit you,” he said finally, much quieter than before. Something in his eyes looked stunned, lost. “I would never hit you.” He lowered Legolas carefully to the ground and stared at him like he was seeing him for the first time. “Did-- did you think I was going to hit you?”

Legolas didn’t know what to say, so he just said nothing. His legs felt weak and limp, and so did the rest of his body. He was still covered from head to toe in sticky strands. He realized-- distantly, as if watching himself from very far away-- that he was trembling.

“You thought I was going to hit you,” Ada said faintly. His face was very white. “Oh Elbereth. I-- you were running away. From me.”

This was all true, but Legolas thought that saying so would not be the right thing to do in this situation. He watched Ada lower the glowing sword and cover his face with one shaking hand. Was he crying? “I thought I’d lost you,” he breathed.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Legolas said anxiously. “I didn’t know about the- the spiders.” He tried to keep his eyes on the shiny silver-blue sword instead of looking past the black, twisted trees on either side. He was pretty sure he was imagining the soft click-click-click still ringing in his ears, but he didn’t feel nearly as brave as before. His small knife was still stuck somewhere in the web, and his knees were knocking together and his teeth were chattering and he felt small and weak and slightly dizzy.

Ada was silent, shoulders slumped. Legolas thought he saw wetness glinting on his face in the shadows. He tried not to look: the thought of Ada crying in front of him was scary, surreal. He took a small, shaky step forward, wanting to be closer to the blue glow and farther away from the spiky trees. Hot tears blurred his vision. He tried to swallow, but it hurt too much, like a sharp stone had wedged itself in his throat.

He’d made Ada cry. This was all his fault. Why had he ever thought it would be a good idea to run away? Legolas hid his face in his hands and tried to stop the tears from coming out, but they welled up anyway, stinging his eyes and trickling down his face, melting away some of the wispy cobwebs still clinging to his cheeks.

A hand suddenly came down on his shoulder. Legolas yelped, flooded with irrational panic, and tried to twist away, thinking some creature had grabbed him in its razor-sharp talons and was going to drag him off into the darkness. Then he opened his eyes and realized it was just Ada. He knelt slowly on the forest floor, lowering himself to Legolas’s height, strands of web sticking to the hem of his silver robe. His pale face was streaked with tears, lit up in the sword’s bluish light, and there was something shattered in his eyes.

“You’re scared of me, aren’t you?” His voice was barely audible. Legolas held his breath and nodded nervously.

Pain flickered in Ada’s eyes, and a shadow-- not the silhouette of spiky branches, but something deeper, subliminal-- lifted from his face like a veil. He stared unblinkingly at Legolas, unconscious of the wet tracks on his face. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Legolas lifted a trembling hand and pointed at the left side of his face, smooth and healed where the twisted, gaping scar had been just moments before. “What-- what happened to your--”

“It happened a long time ago,” Ada said, lowering his gaze the way he did when Legolas asked him a question he didn’t like, and taking a deep breath before forging on. “In a battle. There was a dragon.”

“Before I was born?” Despite his apprehension, Legolas was still curious. “How come I never saw it before?”

Ada’s face looked very fragile. Like a million invisible cracks lay below the surface, and it would shatter if touched. “I use a glamour to hide it,” he said. “It’s just an illusion. I didn’t think-- I’m sorry for losing control.”

“Was it when Naneth--”

He nodded.

Legolas felt like his throat was closing up. “Does it still hurt?” he whispered.

“Yes,” Ada said softly. More glassy tears slid down his face. Somehow, Legolas didn’t think he was talking about the scar.

“I’m sorry for running away,” he said in a small voice. “I didn’t mean to.”  
Ada almost smiled. It was the first time Legolas had seen anything on his face that wasn’t cold and sharp, and a half-formed memory rose up unbidden from a forgotten corner of his mind. “Are-- are you mad at me?” he whispered, hardly daring to hope.

“No, I’m not,” Ada said. His voice sounded strange, all tight and choked up.

Legolas felt more hot tears prick his eyes, but the horrible, icy feeling in his chest was gone. He managed a wobbly smile, feeling slightly light-headed. “C-can we go home now?”

Normally, Legolas would have objected to being carried-- he was eighty now, practically an adult!-- but he was dazed and shivery and covered in sticky cobwebs, and when Ada picked him up he found he was barely able to summon the strength to cling to his shoulder. He tried to keep his eyes open at first, watching the dark woods for beady eyes and clicking pincers, but they kept sliding down, thoughts slipping out of his head and leaving behind soft dark static.

The last thing he remembered before falling asleep was a rush of cool, tangible relief. He was saved; he was going home.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm not crying, you're crying ;-;


End file.
